Slashdot Mirror
Copying LaserDiscs To DVD?
SBECK asks: "Now that DVD writers are on the market (and are actually becoming affordable), I've been thinking of getting one with the hopes of 'backing up' all my LaserDiscs. I've got quite a collection of LaserDiscs and would like to make sure that I'll always be able to play them in case LaserDiscs go the way of the betamax and I'm not able to replace my LaserDisc player. So, I get a huge hard disk, a video capture card, a DVD RAM, and some software to MPEG encode the video. Am I going to be able to burn a DVD with approximately the same video quality as the original laserdisc? Will I have any problems creating a DVD that I can then play in any standard DVD player? Any suggestions on hardware/software combinations? Any gotchas I should know about?"
You will most likely loose some quality in the LD->DVD translation, but not enough to be seriously worried about.
You need to be careful with the DVD-RAM disks. Many DVD players won't read them. This will hopefully change in the future.
You might have some problems creating a correctly formatted DVD disk, but I think that some people have been working on that problem.
I mean, worst case, you'll have an MPEG-2 video stream that you have to view on your computer until the digital video market stabilizes. Still beats having nothing if your Laserdisk deck dies.
Gentoo Sucks
Check out this website... and especially the FAQ section...
It should answer most questions. It's liable to cost upwards of $10,000 (probably more like $15,000) to purchase all the hardware and software to take your LDs and transfer them to DVDs.
Laserdisc players are not gone yet -- maybe it's cheaper to get a couple backup players and forget the transfers?
The Pioneer DVL-919 is an excellent combo player.... streets for ~$1,000.
-sid
Okay, I realized this isn't going to be particularly helpful, but . . . . .
With the time, trouble, and effort this is going to take, wouldn't you be better off just rebuying the movies on DVD? DVD prices are also coming down, and you get extra features (okay, some are lame, but many are worth the money).
You didn't mention how many LaserDiscs you have, so I can't do a breakdown on the price of the equipment you're planning on getting vs replacing your collection on DVDs -- you've probably already done this and been happy with the results. But the equipment you mentioned is probably going to run you about $1,000, even at the new "affordable" prices -- that's about 40 to 50 movies on DVD, which (on top of the money) is about 80 to 100 hours out of your life, minimum.
Cool idea, but is it really worth it?
Quotes from A Man for All Seasons
It may be more trouble than it's worth...
But good luck getting the Criterion LD of BladeRunner in DVD format...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
What you will want to use is a DVD-R system, not a DVD-RAM drive. From what I understand, they use different media (the DVD-R has a higher density), and can be played back on normal DVD players.
However, they aren't cheap. About a year back they hovered at around $10,000. Today you should be able to get one (a cheap one) for around $8000. I have no idea how much media costs, or where you can get it.
I also don't know how these devices handle region encoding, CSS, etc - whether they force you to use one region (probably), or if you can select the region/use CSS/macrovision (maybe on high end models).
If you can get the money together on this, and buy the equipment, you might be able to set up a niche business of doing LD backups. Return the LD and DVD-R back to the client - there shouldn't be any legal hassles (consult an IP lawyer, most definitely). You might be able to make your backups, and gain your investment back as well.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Since you'll have to re-encode to MPEG-2 to put the contents of a laserdisc onto DVD, it probably won't make a huge difference if you just capture from a component out on an LD player, rather than attempting to scan the contents of the LD bit-by-bit.
Then its no more difficult to put the contents of an LD on a DVD than it is to put the contents of any other video/film medium.
Ideally, you'd either want to take the component out of an LD player and put it straight into a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, or capture at full-res, uncompressed with audio to a big RAID array before software encoding the resulting frames to MPEG-2.
Either way, its going to cost you a lot of money, so unless youve got an extensive library of laserdiscs you really badly need on DVD, i just plain wouldn't bother.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Trivially compressed full-frame PAL/NTSC video uses over 10MB (thats MegaBytes) per second.
There are very few single drives that can handle a sustained 10MB/s of data being written to them, hence the need for RAID arrays.
Most broadcast houses use expensive Discreet/SGI equipment with big, fast RAID arrays to handle uncompressed footage.
You might think you can do the same job with a BT848 card and a US$200 ATA-100 drive, but if you need to to work, work properly, and keep working for more than a few minutes at a time, you quickly learn you need to spend the cash to get quality results.
Sure, the cost-of-entry for high quality desktop video is dropping like a stone, but ripping uncompressed video to hard disks is not something you can do without additional hardware and very fast disk subsystems.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long